copyright

IPHONEGAMERZ

hi, i need someone to explain to me what copyright is, can we just place the copyright symbol beside our names or do we have to buy it. and what is TM? thx

Snowleapord

Copyright is like to show you invented the product. I think it might be free.
I'm not that sure about tm unless it means trademark.

Hope it helps!

Manko

I think it's different from country to country. The way I learned it was that R means registered and needs to be made official by seeking patent or something. While TM means trademark and is a much more loose concept. Then there is the C which I think is unnecessary if I'm not mistaken.

The thing is that whatever symbol you use, it is just a symbol it doesn't mean that your stuff is protected, it's not a legal contract by simply leaving a mark. The rights are yours no matter what you do and the symbol is more a reminder or a note to others what is considered to be the product.

Then again I'm in no way a lawyer so if you are really worried about it talk to a real professional.

IPHONEGAMERZ

thx to both of u, ive understood nw

Cobra

See here for information about copyrights:
http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/

jmrsound

Eh you guys got it mostly wrong. For what you are trying to do here with GameSalad, Copyright is probably the most important thing you can do if you're trying to protect the rights of your work. Yes, Copyright can be free or you can pay the government to do it for you. Now the poor man's way of doing this(I'm not totally sure how you would do this with a GameSalad game), but I learned this working with the music industry and that would be just to place a CD/Flash Drive with the game on it and then mail it to yourself. Don't ever open it unless needed to prove your ownership! The date in which it was mailed will be on the envelope and that is your proof that you created this entity first.

Now for Trademark and Register, Probably mostly useless unless you're creating some kind of brand behind your product and you don't want anyone to use something similar, but that's a whole different lesson.

adent42

Disclaimer: just informal info, not constituting legal advice... ask your lawyer... blah blah.

Now that that's out of the way. Copyright (in the US at least) is a right you have on a work as soon as you create it. It probably helps to label it "copyright <me> <some date>" No registration is required.

The registered mail trick is only so that you may have evidence of the date when something was created, but doesn't really do much and I believe doesn't always hold up. The amount of "evidence" the post office collects as well as limited time frame in which USPS keeps records limits this method's usefulness.

I think the surest way to protect your copyright is to register it with an authority, in the US that authority is http://www.copyright.gov/forms/ (US Copyright Office). Based on the link, it looks like basic registration is $50.

You may also release the copyright to your works to the public domain (it belongs to the public and no longer has an owner) or license for others to use.

Trademarks are a little trickier. "tm" is a claim that you are using a name/logo as an identity for trade. TM can be claimed by anyone, but it usually comes down to who has used the name the longest for purposes of trade in a given industry, geographical area, etc.

The circled R means that the mark is registered and it's claim can be backed up by a registration authority. But granting of that registration is subject to similar criteria (whether it's actively used as an identity in trade, whether it already exists in the same line of business and in the same geographical area).

Patents are for claiming ownership of a process or device design. I won't even pretend to know enough to elaborate there.

So for a game, you would want to declare your copyright (which you own by virtue of creating the game, as along as you also created all the assets or own the rights to them). Unless you see the game becoming VERY successful, it's probably not worth registering.

If you plan on doing a lot of work with it, you would want to trademark your game "studio" name and logo, though it's not worth going through the registration process unless you're thinking of going big.

In all cases, you must be vigilant in protecting your IP, as your reactions to various instance of IP infringement could affect how well protected your claims are. (If you let it slide the first 5 times you see an infringement, the court might argue that it's a reasonable expectation for the 6 infringer to not expect any repercussions with using your IP).

We'd welcome any discussion of difference in IP laws in other countries or corrections to anything I've said.